From: Edmund Hon
Subject: Re: Armee du Nord/Jena *LONG*
>Has anyone been playing Jena or Armee du Nord by Clash of Arms?
I have (and love) L'Armee du Nord. Saw Jena on the weekend (but I bought 3
decks of Tank Commander instead - it's first on my must-buy list).
(Note: please bear in mind that I'm not a Napoleoniphile when you read the
following.)
L'Armee du Nord is an operational (or whatever term is appropriate for that
period) level game of Bonaparte's "100 days campaign" into Belgium on June
1815, which ended in the famous battle of Waterloo.
The scale is 700 meters/hex, 2 hours per day turn (4 per night/rain turn).
Units are divisions and brigades with individual corp/army leaders
represented. The 3 maps cover the area from the France/Belgium border to
Brussels. The counters and maps are of Rick Barber and CoA's usual excellent
style which anyone who has seen a CoA game should be familiar with.
The game starts on the morning of June 15th and ending on the last turn of
June 20th (there is an optional rule for continuing play into the end of
June 21st).
The turn sequence is basically a fairly traditional command
check/move/combat cycle. The twist is that the Anglo-Dutch units get to do
their cycle of command/move/combat first, followed by the French units and
finally Prussia.
Command control is done by having units within their corp commander's
command radiu and the corp commander within the army leader(s) command
radius. There are five army leaders: Wellington (Anglo-Dutch), Blucher
(Prussia), Ney, Grouchy and Napoleon (France), although a couple of optional
rules published later in CoA's magazine put some restrictions on the use of
Grouchy and Ney (see below). Army leaders can put units directly in command
(bypassing the corp commander) but doing so they can't command other corp
commanders.
Units that are in command can move/fight freely. For units that are out of
command, they are treated some what differently. French units/corp commander
that are out of command may roll for initiative. If they get it they act
just like they are in command, otherwise they can't move.
Anglo-Dutch/Prussia units/corp commanders that are out of command must move
toward's their respective Corp Assembly Marker (CAM), which can be moved
only 3 times per day.
ZOCs, called Zone of Influence (ZOI) in this game is very sticky, but only
cavalries exert a ZOI. Units stop upon entering it and they cannot leave
until the unit exerting the ZOI has moved away or eliminated.
The are 3 kinds of combat: cavalry charge, regular unit vs. unit combat and
artillery bombardment. Cavalry charge is a function of unit morale and
terrain (size is irrelavent here, which, while true in some cases, is not
entirely a non-factor.) The cavalry charge has been a point of critisisim
from most review's I've read, and CoA has published an updated charge table.
Regular combat is just a traditional SP ratio based CRT with Ar/Ex/Dr type
results, with modifiers for morale, terrain and the use of combined arms
(the hex must be bombarded first than attacked by infantry and cavalry).
Bombardment is done by rolling on a table and cross referencing the # of
artillery SPs (don't mass your units!).
There is a corp morale track display which keeps track of accumulated
casualties suffer by each corp. Enough casualties suffered and a corp will
be demoralized with reduced movement rate and morale value. If caualty keeps
mounting eventually a corp will shatter and all units will be removed.
An army can disintegrate by having one or more of it's corp demoralized. The
Anglo-Dutch army can also be disintegrated by French occupation of Brussels.
Disintegration of the French and Prussian army means that they will suffer
double losses on all types of combat. Anglo-Dutch disintegration will remove
all Dutch/Belgian units and improve French morale. If an army suffers enough
casualties it will shatter and basically ends the game.
Most of the Anglo-Dutch/Prussian armies start the game off-map, and move
onto the map via a Off-Board Movement Track. This is an abstract
representation of the road net surrounding the play area, which can go as
far as Liege on the east and Tournai on the west. Units can switch to a
different track (i.e. road) at certain intersections on the OBMT. While a
nice way to handle variable reinforcement, the implementation is slightly
flawed in that by carefully jumping at various intersections, a unit can
enter the map faster than is historically possible. (For how to fix it see
below.)
Let's see, what else is in the game:
- Units can recover some of their losses via reorganization at the beginning
of each day, but this will not affect the demoralization/shattering of a corp.
- There is an optional rule for limited intelligence by having all units on
the map placed face down except during combat.
- French Pontooneers.
- Units must disengage at the end of the day.
- 2 smaller scenarios besides the biggie - one covering the action on the
16th (Quatre Bras / Ligny) and the other one covering the 18th (Waterloo &
Wavre).
The game plays fairly quickly, as far as indivisual turns go. But there are
a lot of them (63), so it will take a few evenings to finish. My biggest
complaint of this game is the setup. The map is not numbered and the setup
chart only tells you a unit is located at a certain village/town/city. So
unless you are fairly familiar with the geography of the area, you'll have a
merry time trying to find all the towns (especially for a non-French speaker
like me). I solved this partially by dividing each map into 8 segments
according to the fold-lines, and write down where everything is on the setup
charts.
There hasn't been a lot of errata for this game, about a quarter of a page
or so, and mostly they are clarifications. CoA did come out with quite a few
expansion and optional rules: a modified cavalry charge table, an optional
CRT with more flavour, reliablity rules for Ney and Grouchy, a small
tournament scenario covering just Wavre, etc. They can all be found on the
latest issue of CoA's magazine (#23/24 winter/spring 96).
I highly recommend anyone who has (or is going to buy) this game to pick up
the Fall 1993 issue (vol.8 no.1 Issue 37) of _The Canadian Wargamers
Journal_, which has extensive coverage of L'AdN, including a nodal map which
replaces the OBMT.
Overall I'll give this game an A-
Jeez, whatdayaknow, I just wrote a review!
(I've been toying with the idea of using the card game _Eagles_ to resolve
combat for L'AdN.)
---
/// __ / edmundh@ipoline.com http://www.ipoline.com/~edmundh
/// /_ dmund / "Major? FYI, ABC needs TLAM-C BDA's PDQ or ASAP!"
/// /_/_/ / - ABC correspondent Roland Hedley,
/// / /on / during a Desert Storm press briefing